Blog o cestovaní nielen po Japonsku / Travel blog

9. May 2014

6. Máj – Nagoya

EN: I was quite busy in the last few days, therefore I did not update my blog. I concluded the long 50-days long period in Tokyo and moved to Osaka, from where I immediately started other trips using JR Pass. Golden Week considerably messed up my plans, I originally wanted to go to Nagasaki, but all the trains were booked. I had to move this journey and I undertook it during the weekend. So the backup plan was the visit of Nagoya, which is one of the largest cities in Japan and it has quite a lot to offer. I managed to see all the sights and places I wanted to see, but there are still some attractions left, which I hope I will be able to see in the future.

Firstly I headed to Nagoya castle, which is not as nice as the one in Matsumoto, but it’s still worth visiting. There is a hall with important paintings, some kind of a palace, but since it was in the middle of reconstruction, I did not get inside. The most important and the most impressive place in Nagoya which I couldn’t miss was the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology. So far, this is the largest museum I have seen in my life, is I’m not mistaken, as the name indicates, it depicts the history of the largest car manufacturer in the world – Toyota. Since a lot of Toyota plants and its headquarters are placed in the region around Nagoya, the museum is only one of the few places related to Toyota, which can be visited by tourists. The museum I visited was built on the premises of the original Toyoda plant (yes, Toyoda, the company started it’s business with automated loom production and only in 1933 it started to operate in automotive industry.

The museum itself is massive, I didn’t even have enough time to see everything in detail. Everything is bilingual (Japanese and English), you can ask for English-speaking guide as well. You can see how the textile producing machines operated in the past, how Toyota shifted its business towards car production, how it happened, there are real time performances of car-producing machines and robots and other things. It’s really very comprehensive museum, you need quite a lot of time to see everything it offers.

My last stop in Nagoya was its tallest building Midland Square, which promised a nice view of the city from the 45th floor. Unfortunately the design of its open-air observatory is really weird, so you can see pretty much everything, but it was virtually impossible to take pictures. The entry costs 730 yen, so the visit depends on your decision.